67+ Dan Buettner Quotes Harnessing the Power of Longevity and Happiness

Dan Buettner is an American author, educator, and explorer who is best known for his work researching and writing about the world's longest-lived cultures. He is the founder of the Blue Zones, a company that uses research to help people live longer, healthier lives. He is the author of multiple books, including The Blue Zones Solution and The Blue Zones of Happiness. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Dan Buettner on life, creativity, education.

Top 10 Dan Buettner Quotes

1. Eat your vegetables, have a positive outlook, be kind to people, and smile.
2. In a culture that celebrates youth, we largely overlook the vast repository of wisdom older people possess.
3. I think we live in a culture that relentlessly pursues comfort. Ease is related to disease. We shouldn't always be fleeing hardship. Hardship also brings people together. We should welcome it.
4. One of the best ways to move naturally is by inconveniencing yourself: ditch the remote, the garage door opener, the leaf-blower; buy a bike, broom, rake, and snow shovel.
5. The newness effect of a new thing wears off in nine months to a year, but financial security can last a lifetime.
6. Some 690,000 Americans will die this year eating the Standard American Diet. About $1.9 Trillion of our annual $3.7 Trillion healthcare spend is directly attributable to our poor diet.
7. Black beans and soy beans are the cornerstones of longevity diets around the world.
8. People who are making it to live in environments where they are regularly nudged into physical activity.
9. If happiness were a cake recipe, and ingredients included having food, shelter, healthcare, education, satisfying work, a good life partner, the most important ingredient would be where you live.
10. WE ALL NEED: Something to do, someone to love, something to give & something to look forward to.

Dan Buettner Short Quotes

• One of the big things I've learned is that there's an advantage to regular low-intensity activity.
• Singapore is the happiest place in Asia
• If you’re eating vegetables you are probably pushing unhealthier food out of your diet.
• Select your friendships carefully. Gather people around you who will reinforce your lifestyle.
• Have fun, be active. Ride a bike instead of driving, for example.
• A doctor may know more than a peasant, but a peasant and a doctor know more together.
• Deepen your existing spiritual commitment.
• You have to know why you get up every morning.
• The happiest people in America socialize about seven hours a day.
• Kids in a home with grandparents are healthier.

Dan Buettner Quotes About Life

I know exactly what my values are and what I love to do. That's worth additional years right there. I say no to a lot of stuff that would be easy money but deviates from my meaning of life. — Dan Buettner

Having a purpose and knowing exactly what your values are will add additional years to your life. You rarely get satisfaction sitting in an easy chair. If you work in a garden on the other hand, and it yields beautiful tomatoes, that's a good feeling. — Dan Buettner

Life expectancy in America is about 79, we should be able to live to 92. Somewhere along the line, we're leaving 13 years on the table. So my quest is -- how do we get those extra 13 years? And how do we make those extra 13 years good years? — Dan Buettner

The beauty of moving naturally, i.e. walking and gardening, is they're low impact. You're less likely to fall down and break a hip. Setting up your life so you're nudged into general physical activity every day is a strategy for your entire life from age 10 to 100. — Dan Buettner

A long healthy life is no accident. It begins with good genes, but it also depends on good habits. — Dan Buettner

The more things for which you develop a fondness the richer the life you live. — Dan Buettner

I asked her what it felt like to hold a great-great-great-granddaughter. She put her head back and she said, 'It feels like leaping into heaven.' — Dan Buettner

Having a purpose and knowing exactly what your values are will add additional years to your life. — Dan Buettner

In Sardinia, the older you get the more equity you have, the more wisdom you're celebrated for. You go into the bars in Sardinia, instead of seeing the Sports Illustrated swimsuit calendar, you see the centenarian of the month calendar. — Dan Buettner

We know that isolation kills. Fifteen years ago, the average American had three good friends. We're down to one and half right now. — Dan Buettner

Dan Buettner Quotes About Longevity

Costa Rica spends only 15% of what the USA does on health care, yet its people appear to be living longer healthier lives than people in any other country on earth. — Dan Buettner

The islands at the southern end of Japan have historically been known for longevity, once called the land of immortals. Okinawans have less cancer, heart disease and dementia than Americans, and women there live longer than any women on the planet. — Dan Buettner

The most important in any longevity recipe is TASTE. — Dan Buettner

The secret to longevity, as I see it, has less to do with diet, or even exercise, and more to do with the environment in which a person lives: social and physical. What do I mean by this? They live rewardingly inconvenient lives. — Dan Buettner

There is no pill for longevity or a fountain of youth. The Danish Twin Study established that only about 30% of how long the average person lives is dictated by our genes, the other 80% is dictated by our lifestyle and environment. — Dan Buettner

Diet and supplements and exercise programs aren't what is achieving longevity. Having a faith-based community can add four to 14 years. — Dan Buettner

It's hard to reach [the age of] 100. We're not programmed for longevity. We are programmed for something called procreative success. — Dan Buettner

Dan Buettner Quotes About Aging

The name of the game is to keep from pushing the accelerator pedal so hard that we speed up the aging process. The average American, however, by living a fast and furious lifestyle, pushes that accelerator too hard and too much. — Dan Buettner

Even people in the Blue Zones experience stress. Stress leads to chronic inflammation, associated with every major age-related disease. What the world’s longest-lived people have that we don’t are routines to shed that stress. Make sure to take time to unwind. — Dan Buettner

The brutal reality about aging is that it has only an accelerator pedal. We have yet to discover whether a brake exists for people. — Dan Buettner

Dan Buettner Famous Quotes And Sayings

Exercise, from a public health perspective, is an unmitigated failure. The world's longest-lived people live in environments that nudge them into more movement. They don't use power tools, they do their own yard work, they grow a garden. — Dan Buettner

I have always followed exactly what interests me and never really worried about the money. And when you think about it, to be able to travel the world... on an expense account and do exactly what interests you, it just doesn't get much better than that. — Dan Buettner

Of course, Minneapolis, we think, 'Oh well, it's cold there, lethally cold.' But the reality is you adapt to weather... Humans are consummately adaptable creatures. — Dan Buettner

We often think about happiness as trying to increase our joy, but it's also about decreasing our worry. So what you get for paying those high taxes is, if you're a parent thinking about putting your child through school, you don't have to worry about it, because all education through college is free. — Dan Buettner

The perfect diet has one hard rule: Eat real food, not food-like substances. Can you find a doughnut in nature? Nope. Can you find an apple in nature? Yes. — Dan Buettner

Research shows that when people get less than 7 hours of sleep per night, their chance of catching a cold triples, they report as much as 30% lower rates of wellbeing, risk of obesity soars, and they have less control over their hunger urges. — Dan Buettner

None of the longest-lived people ran marathons or pumped iron. They live exactly as their grandparents before them - surrounded by family and friends. — Dan Buettner

The luster of an experience can actually go up with time. So, learning to play a new instrument, learning a new language - those sorts of things will pay dividends for years or decades to come. — Dan Buettner

Centenarians are still living near their children and feel loved and the expectation to love. Instead of being mere recipients of care, they are contributors to the lives of their families. They grow gardens to contribute vegetables, they continue to cook and clean. — Dan Buettner

Where you live is the biggest determinant of happiness. Choosing a place where you frequently bump into the neighbors, have easy access to nature, good social services, and are near the water all stack the deck in favor of happiness. — Dan Buettner

If one fails to develop goals that give meaning to one’s existence, if one does not use the mind to it’s fullest, then good feelings fulfill just a fraction of the potential we possess. True happiness involves the pursuit of worthy goals. Without dreams, without risks, only a trivial semblance of living can be achieved. — Dan Buettner

The people you surround yourself with influence your behaviors, so choose friends who have healthy habits. — Dan Buettner

The longest-lived people eat a plant-based diet. They eat meat but only as a condiment or a celebration. Nothing they eat has a plastic wrapper. — Dan Buettner

Drink without getting drunk Love without suffering jealousy Eat without overindulging Never argue And once in a while, with great discretion, misbehave — Dan Buettner

Gratitude always comes into play; research shows that people are happier if they are grateful for the positive things in their lives, rather than worrying about what might be missing. — Dan Buettner

Actually, when you get into your sixties and above, you want to think about exercise differently. It's not just about you know cardiovascular or lifting weights. It's also about avoiding accidents. — Dan Buettner

So learning to play a new instrument, learning a new language - those sorts of things will pay dividends for years or decades to come. — Dan Buettner

I live on the water. I live in a neighborhood that's consummately connected to my neighbors. I bump into them every day. I can bike to work. — Dan Buettner

I think we need to think about our physical activity as a reward, as something enjoyable and something we look forward to doing, not something that we regard as self-flogging. — Dan Buettner

You rarely get satisfaction sitting in an easy chair. If you work in a garden on the other hand, and it yields beautiful tomatoes, that's a good feeling. — Dan Buettner

Walking is the only way proven to stave off cognitive decline - it works. — Dan Buettner

True happiness involves the pursuit of worth goals; without dreams, without risks, only a trivial semblance of living can be achieved. — Dan Buettner

So setting up automatic savings plans, and buying insurance as opposed to buying a new thing. The newness effect of a new thing wears off in nine months to a year, but financial security can last a lifetime. — Dan Buettner

I wake up in the morning and I see that flower, with the dew on its petals, and at the way it's folding out, and it makes me happy, she said. It's important to focus on the things in the here and now, I think. In a month, the flower will be shriveled and you will miss its beauty if you don't make the effort to do it now. Your life, eventually, is the same way. — Dan Buettner

Inconvenience yourself: ditch the remote, the garage door opener, the leaf-blower; buy a bike, broom, rake, and snow shovel. — Dan Buettner

Serve yourself, put the food away, then eat. — Dan Buettner

The gym and the treadmill is a good idea. But the problem is we spend so much effort in marketing messaging, deluding people into thinking if you get on your treadmill or you go to the gym, that's what you need. People who join a gym, the vast majority of them have quit within nine months and almost all of them have quit within two years. So if it's a longevity strategy, does not work. — Dan Buettner

Life Lessons by Dan Buettner

1. Dan Buettner encourages us to focus on our physical and mental health, as well as our relationships, in order to live a long and fulfilling life.
2. He emphasizes the importance of connecting with the people around us, and of taking time to appreciate the small moments in life.
3. He also encourages us to take risks and to be open to new experiences, as these can help us to grow and to find joy in life.